How Do Different Ingredients and Additives Affect the Production Steps and the Bioactive Potential of Mead?

Abstract

Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage that is made from honey diluted in water and commonly with the addition of other ingredients. The chemical characteristics of mead are closely related to the ingredients and additives that are used in its preparation, espe-cially the type of honey, yeast strain and prefermentation nutrients, as well as herbs, spic-es and/or fruits. These additives can affect not only the fermentation process, in particular the yeast activity, the formation of metabolites and fermentation time, but also the bio-active potential of the mead, which mainly depends on phenolic compounds. Scientific studies have shown that the mead with added different plant species contains consider-able amounts of different classes of polyphenols, which have important biological activ-ities. Within this context, this review study seeks to investigate how different ingredients and additives can affect each of the stages of the preparation of mead, as well as its bio-active potential, in order to understand the effects on its chemical composition, and thus add greater commercial value to this beverage.